Laws or technicalities? Judge to decide R-71 challenge

Is a requirement that people who sign referendum petitions be registered Washington voters when they sign an important tenet of state law or a “hyper-technicality?”

That’s one of the questions a King County Superior Court judge must answer as she decides whether to grant an injunction keeping Referendum 71 off the November ballot. R-71 would give voters a chance to overturn the state’s new “everything but marriage” same-sex domestic partnership law.

On Monday the secretary of state’s office said the referendum had enough valid signatures to make the ballot. At almost the same time, attorneys were arguing before Judge Julie Spector about the signature-gathering process. Spector said she would issue her ruling Wednesday morning, the same day the secretary of state is expected to officially certify R-71 for the ballot.

A group called Washington Families Standing Together filed a lawsuit last week requesting an injunction that would block R-71. Washington Families Standing Together says the secretary of state has not complied with the law in processing R-71. Signature gatherers are supposed to sign declarations saying that signatures they’ve collected are valid to the best of their knowledge and that they personally circulated the petition, the lawsuit says.

Attorney David Burman said in arguments Monday there were petitions with 2,058 signatures in which there was no name and no signature from the person collecting them.

After a month of counting petition signatures, the secretary of state’s office said Monday that R-71 had 121,486 valid voter signatures — nearly a thousand more than needed to advance to the general election.

Burman also said the secretary of state was ignoring requirements that say only registered voters can sign petitions. The lawsuit says that on Aug. 17, Secretary of State Sam Reed told his staff to ignore the date in voter files as the voter registration date and accept signatures from people who were not cleared to vote when they signed.

“If the secretary of state had followed what we believe was the correct legal advice, this referendum would not have qualified,” Burman told Spector.

Jeff Even, representing the secretary of state, said the law about the signature gathering process wasn’t as clear as Burman suggested. He also said it was common practice for initiative and referendum signature gatherers to register people to vote as they got people to sign petitions.

“We encourage that,” Even said.

And Even said if signature gatherers don’t follow proper procedure, that doesn’t mean valid voter signatures shouldn’t be accepted on referendums. “A violation of law by the circulator doesn’t invalidate voter signatures,” he said.

Attorney Stephen Pidgeon, who represented R-71 proponents, told Spector that the issues being raised by Burman are hyper-technicalities. He also said the secretary of state had not been shy about rejecting signatures, including ones turned in just a few minutes past the late July deadline.

The original domestic partnership law, backed by Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, two years ago, provided inheritance rights in cases where there was no will, hospital visitation rights, and the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations. Almost 6,000 domestic-partnership registrations have been filed since July 2007.

Some rights and responsibilities that would be extended to gay and lesbian families under the legislation passed earlier this year are:

Victims’ rights, including the right to receive notifications and benefits allowances.

Business succession rights.

Legal process rights, such as the ability to sign certain documents, the requirement to join in certain petitions, rights to cause of action, and ability to transfer licenses without charge.

The right to use sick leave to care for a spouse.

New Jersey, California, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia have laws that either recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships that afford same-sex couples similar rights to marriage. Thirty states have gay-marriage bans in their constitutions.